An entertainment entrepreneur. A field representative for a California State Assembly Member. A writer for one of the top healthcare websites. These are just a few of the career paths made possible for UCI alumni by studying languages other than English.
At UCI’s School of Humanities, students can take courses in 14 languages other than English, and major or minor in several languages.
Fluency in languages other than English has enabled our students and alumni to study and travel abroad, launch careers domestically and overseas, and deepen their connection to their own cultures and that of others.
These are the stories of six multilingual alumni.
Christopher Khachadour grew up speaking Western Armenian, an endangered language with only 200,000 native speakers and about a million second-language speakers.
Between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman Empire systematically killed over a million Armenians in what is known as the Armenian Genocide. Khachadour’s great-grandparents were orphaned because of the war. His ancestors escaped to various parts of the Middle East and later to Los Angeles.
A hundred years have passed since the Genocide ended, but the Western Armenian language is still in peril. Western Armenian is rarely taught intergenerationally, with fewer descendants of genocide survivors who live outside of Armenia learning the language.
After three generations of expulsion due to violence, Khachadour’s family fought to keep the language alive. His parents enrolled him and his sister in an Armenian private school where he learned how to read and write Western Armenian.
“For me, the Armenian language is a treasure, almost like a family heirloom passed down over generations,” Khachadour says. “While we cannot return to our ancestral homes in modern-day Turkey, we have this unbroken bond via the language.”
His early education ignited a passion that he continued to nourish at UCI, where he enrolled in all courses related to Armenian history and language. He took classes with Houri Berberian, professor of history & Meghrouni Family Presidential Chair in Armenian Studies, who founded UCI’s Center for Armenian Studies and has led the development of Armenian language instruction. He also studied under Talar Chahinian, who currently serves as interim director of the center.
“Armenian history and language courses took me back to my childhood years in Armenian school,” he says. “Many of us in the program had previously attended Armenian school, and Dr. Chahinian would give us advanced coursework to accommodate our capabilities and keep us engaged. She was a great teacher. Dr. Berberian always found a way to look at the greater picture and tie Armenian history to world history, reminding us that we did not develop in a vacuum of history.”
While a student, Khachadour served as the Armenian Students Association’s liaison to UCI’s Armenian Studies Program, where he encouraged his peers to enroll in Armenian courses and attend lectures organized by the program. He also worked as a tour guide, providing campus tours to Armenian middle and high school students in Southern California. His fluency in Armenian even enabled him to catalog a collection of about a thousand Armenian books at the UCI Libraries.
Khachadour double majored in history and political science, with a focus on the Middle East. While at UCI, he spent four years as a board member of the Olive Tree Initiative, through which he planned and led trips to Armenia, Turkey and Georgia in 2017 and to Boston, New York City and Washington D.C. in 2018 and 2019. There, he met with local Armenian and Turkish lobbying groups as well as journalists, NGOs, religious leaders, former ambassadors, the United Nation’s representatives and the State Department.
After graduation, he spent six months volunteering in Armenia with various organizations that required in-depth knowledge of the Western Armenian language and the region’s history, including the Eurasia Partnership Foundation, the Armenian United Nations Association and RepatArmenia.
Since returning from Armenia, he has worked part-time at USC’s Institute for Armenian Studies and full-time as a field representative for California State Assembly Member Laura Friedman, who represents the 43rd district, encompassing the cities of Glendale, Burbank and La Cañada Flintridge; the unincorporated communities of La Crescenta and Montrose; and a portion of Los Angeles, including Little Armenia and East Hollywood.
The 43rd district represents the largest Armenian constituency in the country. Khachadour, who works with 150,000 ethnic Armenian constituents, is the sole Armenian staffer.
“Having the ability to study Armenian is a privilege, as it’s not offered at many institutions. It is an ancient and unique language. I encourage everyone to study a second language, if not a third. And for those interested in engaging with the influential Armenian community of Southern California, I’d strongly recommend it.”
The School of Humanities offers a minor in Armenian studies and two years of Western Armenian language courses.
To read the five other stories, click at the link below
https://www.humanities.uci.edu/news/leading-language
